The US has 100 military bases outside its country in the world, while China is changing geopolitics by building railroads and highways, says renowned investor Jim Rogers in an interview with state-owned CGTN.
Jim Rogers is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more outbound investment experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
The G7 is trying to offer an alternative to China’s global expansion by the Belt&Road Initiative (BRI) but has a hard time finding the right approach. Former China and Africa correspondent Howard French discusses the dilemma’s at a podcast by the Brooking Institute.
DAVID DOLLAR: Hi, I’m David Dollar, host of the Brookings trade podcast Dollar & Sense. Today, my guest is Howard French, a professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a longtime journalist and observer of both China and Africa. He’s really the ideal person with whom to have a conversation about China’s activity in Africa. In particular, what caught my eye recently was an essay Howard wrote in The World Politics Review with the provocative title “Leave Infrastructure to China and Compete Where the West Has More to Offer.” This was after President Biden’s trip to Europe where he launched an initiative that’s seen as a counter to the Chinese Belt and Road. So these are the topics we are going to cover today. Welcome to the show, Howard.
HOWARD FRENCH: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you, David.
DOLLAR: So let’s start with the big picture on China’s infrastructure financing in the developing world, particularly Africa. You have written about the Belt and Road. How do you see the pros and cons of this Chinese initiative?
FRENCH: As being deeply intertwined.
The full transcript of the podcast can be found here.
Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more experts on the Belt&Road Initiative? Do check out this list.
China’s currency, the yuan, still has a long way to go on its road to become an international currency, says political economist Shirley Ze Yu at the S&P Global. The need for China to internationalize its currency “is both strategic and opportune,” Yu said.
The S&P Global:
“The BRI (Belt&Road Initiative) region is China’s natural region to succeed in building a multilateral currency order, to rival the 20th-century U.S.-dominated global monetary system,” said Shirley Ze Yu, a political economist and a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center.
To be sure, China needs to allow the yuan to float more freely. The digital yuan won’t be “a standalone entity,” Yu said, adding, the digital yuan cannot become a global center currency, unless the yuan “itself becomes one.”
The depth and width of the capital market is still the most significant variable, because no country or individuals would hold on to a yuan-denominated asset if there is insufficient market liquidity globally. The yuan “has a long road to travel still,” she said.
Yu said that it is crucial for China to internationalize the yuan now, especially since the U.S. dollar has enjoyed its reign as “the ultimate currency of last resort” post-World War II and dominates the global monetary system. The need for China to press the gas pedal on its yuan internationalization agenda also became more pronounced recently as the U.S. announced sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials. China has to be prepared for its banks to be excluded from international monetary clearing systems, including SWIFT and CHIPS systems, down the line, she said.
The need for China to internationalize its currency “is both strategic and opportune,” Yu said. “In the current decade, we might inevitably see two parallel global monetary systems” — the dollar-based system and a rising and regional yuan-based system.
Shirley Ze Yu is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more financial experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
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| Sara Hsu |
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| Ian Johnson |
Against this background, Chinese President Xi Jinping's One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, also known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), unveiled in 2013, has provided the countries of the wider region with a new challenge as well as a unique opportunity to fast track their economies along the path to development. An investment bonanza is being made available under the BRI, especially for the countries along the ancient Maritime Silk Road.
Coupled with the investment-driven BRI, China has also subtly begun to underline its cultural and religious links in the wider region. A soft power caress of the region! According to Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China, President Xi Jinping has embraced religious faith as part of his "Chinese Dream" and the "Belt and Road Initiative". The nominally atheist Chinese Communist Party has now recognised that religion in Chinese history was a powerful tool in domestic governance and international diplomacy. For Xi's "rejuvenation" of the Chinese nation and national culture after the "Century of Humiliation", this mix of faith and politics constitutes a "re-imagining of the political-religious state that once ruled China".
When Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongxun, was head of the party's religious work beginning in 1980, China's Central Committee issued the famous Document 19 warning party members against banning religious pursuits because it would isolate the Chinese people. Ever since, China has been restoring places of worship destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.More in Indepthnews.net
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| Andy Mok |
Since its inception in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has garnered worldwide attention because of the scale and scope of its ambition. It has also become the target of criticism and suspicion from various quarters.
Recently, the notion of “debt-trap diplomacy” has been prominently featured in mainstream Western media in an effort to mislead and tilt the opinion of elites lacking direct experience of the countries engaged in BRI projects and the nature of infrastructure investment against this initiative.
Proponents of this idea claim that Chinese enterprises, at the behest of the government, encourage targeted countries to take on burdensome amounts of debt for BRI-related infrastructure, knowing full well that these debts are too big to be repaid.
When the borrowing country inevitably encounters repayment problems, China can then seize the assets in question. According to these people, this is a deliberate strategy pursued by China to advance its geopolitical interests at the expense of debtor countries.
Sri Lanka's Hambantota port project has become the poster child to illustrate China’s allegedly nefarious motives. For example, a New York Times article titled "How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port" describes the initial loan of 307 million US dollars to kick-start the project by China's Export-Import Bank in this way: “To obtain the loan, Sri Lanka was required to accept Beijing’s preferred company, China Harbor, as the port’s builder...That is a typical demand of China for its projects around the world, rather than allowing an open bidding process.”
More at CGTN.While the pejorative insinuation is clear, there are perhaps less conspiratorial explanations for such practices. Here's one: Infrastructure projects are extremely risky because they are highly complex and therefore many things can go wrong, resulting in delays and cost overruns.
